The need for better measurements in politics
Growing up, I remember my dad trying to explain what the word “Republican” meant to me and feeling very confused. He talked about money, freedom, and other things that a 6 year old has no concern with, and after a series of endless questions, I think he realized that explaining modern politics to a child was a losing battle.
“Look, George Bush is the good one and John Kerry is the bad one” he said.
The current state of politics pigeonholes voters into choosing along a one-dimensional spectrum from ‘conservative’ to ‘liberal’. However, the meaning of these terms have become increasingly abstract. Political issues that seemingly have no correlation with the underlying philosophies of the spectrum have been adopted by different sides of the aisle, such that environmental concerns, public health, and even infrastructure are now battlegrounds of polarized debate. Even the way a person looks matters.
It is debatable at best whether or not this spectrum works well for national level elections, but it certainly doesn’t lend itself to local level ones. Community neighbors tend to share similar philosophies on life, and local ballots tend to reflect a unipolar way of voting along the liberal-conservative spectrum with not much additional information aside from a name that would distinguish a candidate upon first glance.
There is reason for concern here. How does our current way of thinking about politics affect the way we elect leaders? You may have your own thoughts on this, but I also don’t even think it is possible to unpack just how important issue this is in the first place without looking at how things could be different with a better way to measure a person’s political beliefs.
Challenges of deriving political metrics
For starters, what would we even measure? Officials are often judged at face-value on their ideals. They can be deemed far right, right-leaning, or center-left upon a 1-dimensional spectrum. This approach is purely quantitive at best, as it overlooks key areas of nuance and aggregates candidates into a 1-through-5 type of classification. Things get a little more interesting when we add in another dimension to use in our measurement. With a two-axis representation, “lowering taxes” transforms from a conservative issue to a libertarian issue.
But is this approach approach a good representation of modern politics? One might argue that introducing more dimensions of subjective measurements only complicates the overall measurement. I would agree that the “how-much” quantitative challenge of choosing to place Sandy the Squirrel twice as far to the right of Squidward Tentacles remains up for debate, and I don’t know if there is any fair way of measuring the magnitude of a political belief (much less from a snap judgement about cartoon characters). However, it does give us added resolution in the form of qualitative information: “Sandy is further Right than Squidward, and Squidward is more Authoritarian”.
The more dimensions we are able to introduce, the more specificity we introduce into our assessment of an official’s beliefs. This could in turn enable us to weigh support for more specific policy actions into a measurement of said beliefs.
Designing a new system
Ok, time to get mathy. Let’s look at this spectrum again, but this time from a more exaggerated qualitative point of view. If we are to measure it in a “they are more this-than-that” kind of way, we actually have to define what we are measuring in a way where the sum of the coordinates at every point in the axis is equal to 0. On the two-dimensional political compass, this would look like a downward 45 degree line through the origin. If a person is less economically-right, they are simultaneously more authoritarian. We are not measuring left-to-right, so much as we are measuring less-right to more-right, and we are not measuring libertarian-to-authoritarian so much as we are measuring less and more authoritarian.
This is where things get interesting. We’ve effectively found a way to measure how right-leaning a candidate is in comparison to how authoritarian-leaning they are, but this means that everyone who considers themselves ‘left-leaning’ would also rank highly as ‘authoritarian’. Regardless of your political beliefs, I think most people would agree that this is not an accurate representation of all left-leaning individuals.
Their are two obvious issues here. The first is that, because we only have two-dimensions of axises, we don’t have any other comparative dimensions to redistribute ‘weight’ from that allows us to put someone on a political spectrum that is both left-leaning and libertarian (or right-leaning and authoritarian, for that matter). The second is that the qualities of the measurements (authoritarian to libertarian, conservative to liberal) are fundamentally flawed to begin with. I think it’s important to understand why.
We are currently looking at an individual’s measured political beliefs through a metric that has a built-in negation. I claim there is a big difference between the question are you for or against firearm ownership? and how much do you think we should be enforcing firearm security?
The former question forces a person to take a side, but the latter is actually an entirely different question. We are no longer posing the concern as a binary type of question, and instead asking “how much action should be taken?” Pretty much everyone can get behind the idea of regulatory action on firearms to some degree, whether that is making sure buyers are at least 18 years old, or banning them outright.
Enter: The Politigram
The Politigram is built in response to both of these issues, allowing us to create a political measurement that maximizes qualitative resolution. First, rather than uni-dimensional spectrum (liberal-conservative) or a bi-dimensional spectrum (like the political compass), the Politigram introduces a multi-spectrum measurement with 5-dimensions of focus: Prosperity, Utilitarianism, Liberty, Community, and Humanitarianism.
What you may notice, too, is that all of the dimensions sound like nice things to have to some degree. And that’s the point. We can argue whether or not progressive leftists are on the right side of history, but you’d be pressed to hear a convincing argument against fostering a stronger sense of community.
You may be asking a few things. What do some of these ‘dimensions of focus’ even mean? What do they measure? Why were they chosen? And why 5? You may even feel one doesn’t fully cover all the bases. For example, where is the focus sustainability issues? Let’s answer all those questions, one at a time.
Each of the 5 Politigram focuses represent a different philosophy in governance. They are more closely related to the reasoning behind political actions rather than the actions themselves. This means they are applicable to anyone involved in government, from County Elections Directors, Port Commissioners, City Council-members, right down to voters themselves.
- Community emphasizes building a stronger bridge between community and government, allowing for more culturally relevant policies and greater collectivistic agency in decision-making
- Humanitarianism prioritizes personalized attention for the welfare of the most-in-need, with a focus on support programs and merciful policies over punitive punishments.
- Liberty adheres to Libertarian and Individualistic principles, which places emphasis on the integrity of how policy is drafted and executed. This includes transparent decision-making, honesty in following through on campaign promises, and most importantly, not infringing on individual rights.
- Prosperity addresses the most observable obstructions to economic and growth and security, with consistently enforced emphasis on authority and adherence to law.
- Utilitarianism (easily the least understood word of the five) favors proactive and expert-led decision-making to provide most good for the most people, with a focus on long-term outcomes (More information on the philosophy can be found here).
Because there are 5 dimensions, we can derive a measurable ranking of an individual’s political beliefs (voter or political candidate) across multiple spectrums. I myself feel I lean higher on a Community and Utilitarianism focus and rank quite low on a Prosperity focus in comparison (not that I don’t find it important, just less so than others). This gives an outsider a qualitative understanding of my political beliefs in a way that prioritizes more nuance and accuracy. It’s data that can be easily portrayed as a visualization.
But why were these dimensions chosen the way they are defined? Why only 5? It is possible that 6 or even 7 dimensions may be worthwhile to consider in designing such a tool, but the context in which this tool is being used is important and, for your average voter, too much complication could diminish it’s utility. More importantly; we don’t want there to be any grey area where a political belief falls. Each dimension should standalone distinctly from all the other dimensions.
That distinction is constructed into the dimensions themselves. Liberty negates Community on the spectrum of Individualism vs Collectivism. Liberty also negates Prosperity on the Libertarian vs Authoritative spectrum. From these distinctions, each dimension now has a definition that allows it to ‘adopt’ the political issues that most closely align with their particular negations. A lot of environmental issues, for example, fit nicely into Utilitarianism, which prioritizes the most good for the most people, and proactive policies (such as wildlife conservation). The mathematicians in the room may have noticed that this would give us the summation of n from 1 to 4, (AKA — 10) distinct spectrums, in which to differentiate each dimension from each other.
This tool enables us to take a seemingly complex issue and break it down into more atomic policies. Take Infrastructure, for example. There are a lot of flavors of infrastructure.
- Transportation infrastructure is the most obvious policy that comes to mind, which covers issues like filling potholes in the road and building new roads to alleviate traffic congestion. This is aligns with Prosperity.
- There are more components to infrastructure that are not always fully appreciated and require a great deal of planning and careful execution, but have the potential to yield tremendous outcomes longterm. This includes mass transit systems and sustainable energy/water systems which aligns with Utilitarianism.
- Community might favor walkable living quarters and recreational space for residents, such as bike lanes, green space, parks, and community centers.
- Humanitarianism might care more about making infrastructure more accessible. These kinds of considerations would weigh heavily into the implementation of bus networks, as well as the upkeep of schools and libraries.
- Liberty prioritizes giving people more agency, and might manifest as a negation to funding infrastructure projects that are either costly for taxpayers or might have the potential to be disruptive in their lives.
So where does this lead?
Politics is broken. The fact that we operate on the paradigm of “the lesser of two evils” is appalling. Local elections are even more broken — voter turnout in Washington State alone during the 2023 election alone hit a peak low of 36%. And that’s really sad, because we need people to participate in local elections if some form of consensual governance is to continue on into the future.
But as you may have experienced in your own life, the demands of life can push the priority of voting in a non-presidential election to the side, and it’s hard to find a source of information or news you can trust. So, having an easy-to-use, trustworthy, and non-partisan resource where people can find out information about the people who represent them is more important than ever.
The Politigram on it’s own is not enough to revolutionize the way we participate in government, but it does offer a new way of thinking about politics, and we can use it to draw up comparative predictions on how candidates running for office think about issues, and not just what they prioritize (which is usually the same across the board during a given election).
The aim of Clearvote is just that. We want to give people the means to engage as voters in a novel way. Based on the candidates voters select, we can show them an composite of their own voting sentiments, which could enable people to think about their own political motivations less superficially than the status quo.
It may be hard to recognize now, but we do have a say in our future, and our present. Perhaps one day, we might even embrace our disagreements as “Blue-no-matter-who” or “MAGA-Republican” voters and come together as humans with diverse beliefs, to build a better society that everyone can get behind.
